Women labor union members; Women labor union members -- United States
In the struggle itself, the New York experiences were repeated. The
fight went on slowly and stubbornly. Arrests occurred daily and still
more arrests. Money was the pressing need, not only for food and rent,
but to pay fines and to arrange for the constantly needed bonds to
bail out arrested pickets. At length a group of prominent Philadelphia
women headed by Mrs. George Biddle, enlisted the help of some leading
lawyers, and an advisory council was formed for the protection of
legal rights, and even for directing a backfire on lawbreaking
employers by filing suits for damages. With such interest and
such help money, too, was obtained. The residents of the College
Settlement, especially Miss Anna Davies, the head resident, and Miss
Anne Young, the members of the Consumers' League, the suffragists and
the clubwomen all gave their help.
These women were moved to action by stories such as those of the
little girl, whom her late employer had been begging to return to his
deserted factory. "The boss, he say to me, 'You can't live if you not
work.' And I say to the boss, 'I live not much on forty-nine cents a
day.'"
As in New York, the police here overreached themselves in their zeal,
and arrested a well-known society girl, whom they caught walking
arm-in-arm with a striking waist-maker. Result, the utter discomfiture
of the Director of Public Safety, and triumph for the fortunate
reporters who got the good story.
An investigation into the price of food, made just then by one of the
evening newspapers came in quite opportunely, forcing the public to
wonder whether, after all, the girls were asking for any really higher
wage, or whether they were not merely struggling to hold on to such
a wage as would keep pace with the increasing prices of all sorts of
food, fuel, lighting, the commonest clothing and the humblest shelter.
The strike had gone on for some weeks, when an effort was made to
obtain an injunction forbidding the picketing of the Haber factory.
This was finally to crush the strike and down the strikers. But
in pressing for an injunction the manufacturers came up against a
difficulty of their own making. The plea that had all along been urged
upon the union had been the futility of trying to continue a strike
that was not injuring the employers. "For," they had many times said,
"we have plenty of workers, our factories are going full blast."
Whereas the Haber witnesses in the injunction suit were bringing proof
of how seriously the business was being injured through the success of
the girl pickets in maintaining the strike, and, the money loss, they
assured the court was to be reckoned up in thousands of dollars. This
inconsistency impressed the judge, and the strikers had the chance
of telling their story in open court. "Strikers' Day" was a public
hearing of the whole story of the strike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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